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Daniil stares at the sheet of paper he’s set out for himself, and its blank surface stares back at him. He’s made up his mind to do this, by letter if he can’t do it any other way; he thought it might be safer to make a confession (or, perish the thought, a proposition) so potentially risky in a manner that didn’t require him to do it face-to-face, with the added benefit of having more opportunity to fine-tune his thoughts in writing than in speech. And yet now that the time has come to actually spell out what he wants to say, he doesn’t know where to begin.
The salutation is important. This will set the tone. He has to get it right. A simple dear seems too pedestrian for the content that’s about to follow it, so he thinks he should go for something with more weight. But he obviously can’t launch directly out with my beloved Artemy or anything of the like — isn’t there something in the middle? He wonders about my respected friend, but no, that doesn’t give the right impression. Something like esteemed is too formal — maybe dear isn’t so bad, at least for the first draft.
He writes Dear at the top of the page and then stops again. Should he address him by his first name? Would that be too forward? Well, this whole thing is very forward, probably too much so, which is the entire reason why he’s putting it in a letter rather than being able to bear to say it to Burakh’s face.
He crosses out the first line and writes simply, Artemy.
I am writing you about a somewhat sensitive matter, he starts on the next line. I hope you will forgive me for not telling you this in person, but — Daniil thinks, I’m too spineless. Your gentlest rejection would bruise me and your disgust would destroy me. He writes, I thought it best to allow you to form your own reaction in privacy.
I… Daniil pauses. I must confess? He cringes inwardly at the swooning, romance-novel sound of it, but best to just get it out and over with. Over the time we have known each other, I find — what? What does he find? He can’t say I have come to find you wildly attractive in a manner that is most disarming. He has to be a little more tempered than that. He slowly writes out, I have found myself developing a certain attraction to you.
How much detail is he required to go into about said attraction in a message like this? He could tell Artemy how he thinks he’s handsome, but he doesn’t want him to think it’s purely a shallow aesthetic lust. I am fascinated by you — No, that makes him sound like an insect Daniil is studying or something. I find your presence more enjoyable than I had first anticipated when I met you. A dull and ludicrous understatement of his feelings, and Burakh is likely to take offense at it. I think about your hands and your mouth on me all the time — No. God. Definitely don’t say that.
Daniil grinds the end of his fountain pen between his teeth, a habit he hasn’t engaged in since university. What is it about Burakh? Daniil doesn’t know how to name the way he makes him feel or why it’s so unique. He has never met a man quite like Artemy Burakh. He makes Daniil unsure of himself in a way that is so rare, and so exciting, a feeling that Daniil isn’t used to having paired with uncertainty. If Daniil knew how he did it, what strategy of Burakh’s pushes just the right new and electrifying buttons in Daniil’s psyche, maybe it wouldn’t seem like such thaumaturgy, but Burakh himself doesn’t seem to be aware of the effect he has on him. He’s not even trying to charm Daniil, which is the infuriating part. Burakh thrills him with his simplest actions: Daniil spends too much time distracted by just the way he speaks or carries himself, the shape and the motion of his hands. More than once he’s held them out to show Daniil something and Daniil has found himself paying more attention to the well-formed shape of his knuckles than whatever he has in his palm, and afterwards wondering what’s wrong with him — what is a handsome knuckle even meant to look like? What kind of lunatic stares at a man’s knuckles?
Daniil stands and paces around the room while he tries to put together his next paragraph. Lacking for the specific words, he lays out the essential elements of what he needs to say in his head. Acknowledge the nature of their existing relationship. Propose a potential development to this relationship. No, he doesn’t want to be so overly bold as to propose anything, just to…inform Burakh about the possibility. Don’t spill any emotions too effusively, to retain the ability to keep some distance in case it’s received poorly, but sound sincere, in case it’s not received poorly.
He writes standing in front of the desk and goes spinning off to circle the room again every few words, weighing possibilities away from the page before he puts them down. He crosses out adjectives. He writes new ones in. He crosses out the new ones and writes the first ones again.
Daniil muddles his way through another few sentences before he decides he should start drawing it to a close. He should probably say something else, after the declaration itself. Some kind of invitation for Burakh to please let him know if he thinks he could feel the same way? Or is that not how it’s done, is that kind of thing already implied with something like this?
Or on the other hand, if it goes the other way, maybe he should hedge himself against the worst outcomes ahead of time. Leave Burakh with a clear way out that will let him avoid having to come into direct contact with any of Daniil’s undesirable feelings, if he chooses. I hope you don’t find this…he doesn’t know how to best put it tactfully, all the things he’s afraid of. Out of line. Offensive. Terribly unnatural for two people of our like. He dashes off a couple more hurried lines, putting anything down at this point just to get to the end of it. If he can just conclude it, this torment can end and he doesn’t have to think about these things anymore.
The valediction is even worse than the salutation. Yours? Yours…hopefully. No. Certainly not love or anything else so presumptuously intimate. Sincerely makes it sound like an ordinary business letter, and regards is similarly too professional and at odds with the content. Not respectfully. With hope sounds pathetic and begging. Humbly? Distasteful, affected.
After nearly twenty minutes of trying and failing to generate a single word that would be suitable to fill in, he gives up and signs it simply, Daniil.
Daniil reads it over. For all his agonies, it’s not terribly long. Did it really take him such a long time to compose something that fits on a single page? The enormity of everything he’s holding inside him feels like it should take up more space, but when he tries to convert it into a form that’s sensible, speakable, he can only grasp enough to fit into the short paragraphs in front of him.
He goes through it line by line. He switches words around and makes revisions that don’t change anything about the frightening substance at the heart of the letter, but that he hopes will in some way make it more palatable, as if adding an extra clause or substituting a synonym might somehow be the key that changes Burakh’s response.
When he can’t bear to find any more edits to make, he rewrites the entire thing out so it looks like he finished it in one try. As soon as the ink is dry enough not to smudge, he folds it up so he won’t have to look at it anymore. He’ll send it in the morning if he hasn’t decided by then that he’s making a terrible mistake.
Midmorning, Artemy is delivered a letter. It’s somewhat curious looking: it’s been folded up several times and it’s actually sealed, which is a rarity among the correspondence he usually gets, somewhat amateurishly with what looks like candle wax. His name is written on the outside in what looks like Dankovsky’s handwriting, neater than usual. He slides his thumb under the seal and opens it.
Artemy,
I am writing you about a somewhat sensitive matter. I hope you will forgive me for not telling you this in person, but I thought it best to allow you to form your own reaction in privacy.
While you and I have had our moments of animosity from time to time, I hope that you will find me truthful when I say that I have grown to respect you as a colleague; however, my feelings for you run somewhat deeper than that. I must confess that over the time we have known each other, I have found myself developing a certain attraction to you.
I hope it will not be necessary to overelaborate on the nature of this attraction, but suffice it to say you are a singularly striking man. I mean this in more than just your bearing, but in mind and in conviction as well. I have discovered that despite my best efforts, I am not able to help what my thoughts do in your presence. It may be that you are already aware of the kind of response you provoke in me and are simply skilled at hiding it, or just indifferent; nevertheless, I wanted to apprise you of my position as I feel I can no longer keep this from you.
If you do not feel the same way, please simply burn this letter and disregard the contents, and I will never speak of the subject again. If this is the case, I hope that I have not offended you with my admission and that you do not find it too objectionable, and I hope that we can maintain our former relationship. I assure you I am capable of remaining professional.
Daniil
Artemy reads it over a second time. Then he reads it over a third, picking out and stalling on certain phrases. Then he folds it back up and sets off for the Stillwater.
Dankovsky must know immediately why he’s here, and he makes a very bad effort at hiding it, but it’s an effort nonetheless. As he turns from his desk to see Artemy at the door, his eyebrows twitch in alarm once and then halfway again before he gets them under control and says, “Good morning.” The tone of ease is pushed into his voice with enough force to knock over a brick wall.
“I got your letter,” Artemy says.
Dankovsky really does fail to keep his face composed now, his mouth pinching into a funny shape. “Ah,” he says.
“I thought about sending one back,” Artemy says, “but I thought I should come here in person.” Dankovsky has gone very still where he sits. “Did you really mean what you said?”
Dankovsky looks at him, tilting his head back just a fraction, and for a moment the nervousness disappears and is replaced with something almost defiant. “Yes.”
“Could have fooled me. You certainly have an odd way of showing it,” Artemy says, but he can’t keep himself from smiling, and he steps closer. Dankovsky seems to relax a little and turns his chair towards him.
“Well, I’ve spelled it out clearly for you now. Even you couldn’t misinterpret that,” he says. “But your own feelings are…still rather cryptic to me.”
“I came here, didn’t I?” says Artemy. He’s close enough now to take Dankovsky’s hand in his own, so he does.
Dankovsky is fighting back a smile of his own, looking up at Artemy as he curls his fingers around his. “Your response was…favorable, then?”
“Let me show you how to demonstrate something you don’t want to be misinterpreted. I hope this will be clear,” he says, and leans down and kisses him.
Dankovsky must be expecting his approach by the time their lips meet, but Artemy still feels him give a tiny, sharp inhale at the moment of contact. Then he kisses Artemy back, his mouth soft against him. It’s a brief, light kiss, but in the illuminated second or two where they touch, Artemy can feel the way Dankovsky tilts his head up to press into him, hungry.
When Artemy pulls back, Dankovsky is breathless, his dark eyes shining. “Yes,” he says, “that will do.”